"It does not take long to tell the difference in the sound of the explosion of a gas, shrapnel, or high explosive shell," Carl Andrew Brannen said of his introduction to trench warfare. As that nineteen-year-old marine from Texas had quickly learned, the first big war of the twentieth century promised new horrors on the battlefield. In this intense journey through the beginnings of modern war, C. A. Brannen's memoirs and battlefield snapshots are complemented with a unique set of contemporary and retrospective photographs. Seventy-five years after World War I, the author's son retraced his...

"It is the last five percent of possible exertion that often wins the battle." Brigadier Gen. Hanson Ely's statement best exemplifies the efforts of his troops as part of the allied contingent at the Battle of Soissons, July 18-22, 1918. At a cost of more than twelve thousand soldiers and marines dead, wounded, and missing, American troops struck the Germans with such force that the Germans lost the initiative for the remainder of the war.
"""Soissons"," 1918" provides an intricately detailed account of this pivotal battle in which partly trained, inexperienced American soldiers and...